Monday 7 February 2011

Fly Candy - Musky madness

Have been asked to tie up some custom musky flies for a chap in the States. The only criteria was that they needed to over 10 inches long, Tied with a tandem hook, push a lot of water through the first couple of strips and tied in Tan/white, Tan/Brown & Tan/Black.

This one is 11" long and tied with a combination of bucktail,White chinese neck hackles,grizzly microbarb saddles and a packed deer hair head. All the freathers have been tied on splayed out to give maximum movement.

I've called this model the FunkyMusky. More to follow in the coming days.

8 comments:

Jeff said...

Great stuff Simon. I've been working on similar flies but it much brighter colors. What hooks and sizes did you use?

All about the grab said...

Cheers Jeff...Partridge Ultimate predator 4/0 on the main body and a Tiemco 811s 3/0 saltwater hook for the trailing tail

James O Durbin II said...

Simon-
Nice looking flies. The only comment is the deer hair. Once wet it adds so much weight to the fly. Have you looked at using a foam head instead?

All about the grab said...

The Guy that ordered the flies wanted them with big tightly packed deerhair heads James, So thats what he got. He's going for the world musky on the fly record this year and had certain specs I had to stick to. For my own personal preferance though James I prefer a heavy fly, and would rather fish with this kind of head than foam as It woudld change the action of this fly considerably. Especially if used with an intermediate. Then you may as well fish with a popper!

Jeff said...

I went with a 4/0 Gamakatsu S12S with 2/0 Mustad 34007 as the trailer so a pretty similar setup. With the deer hair heads are these meant to be fished just subsurface with an intermediate line or some other way? I tried fishing some large flies with deer hair heads on the surface last year and found they absorbed too much water to make them float and fish well. For subsurface stuff it's hard to beat the deer though.

All about the grab said...

The idea with these kind of flies Jeff is to have a heavy fly give off as much surface displacement when it hits the water.The 1st 2 strips give off a lot of noise and vibrations plus a long trail of air bubbles. Then the fly generally drops below the surface where it is fished with varying lengths of short & long strips on an intermediate line.

Jeff said...

Awesome info...thanks. Going to be chasing these beasts this summer.

dk said...

Wow man that is baaaad aaaass! I went after some Musky this past fall with some of those pike flies I won last year. No luck but I loved the way they fished. The guys I talked to on the lake were fishing with 12- 14 inch live suckers so that fly seems perfect! Should have better action than a fish with a bunch of treble hooks stuck in it!!